Charles River Editors - Roswell & Area 51: The History and Mystery of the Two Most Famous UFO Conspiracy Sites in America by Charles River Editors

By Charles River Editors

An Aerial Shot of Area 51

Charles River Editors is a boutique digital publishing company, specializing in bringing history back to life with educational and engaging books on a wide range of topics. Keep up to date with our new and free offerings with this 5 second sign up on our weekly mailing list , and visit Our Kindle Author Page to see other recently published Kindle titles.

We make these books for you and always want to know our readers opinions, so we encourage you to leave reviews and look forward to publishing new and exciting titles each week.

Area 51

An aerial view of Area 51 and Groom Lake

We flew over it and within thirty seconds, you knew that was the place ... it was right by a dry lake. Man alive, we looked at that lake, and we all looked at each other. It was another Edwards, so we wheeled around, landed on that lake, taxied up to one end of it. It was a perfect natural landing field ... as smooth as a billiard table without anything being done to it". Kelly Johnson, Lockheeds U-2 spy plane designer

The shape of OXCART was unprecedented, with its wide, disk-like fuselage designed to carry vast quantities of fuel. Commercial pilots cruising over Nevada at dusk would look up and see the bottom of OXCART whiz by at 2,000-plus mph. The aircraft's titanium body, moving as fast as a bullet, would reflect the sun's rays in a way that could make anyone think, UFO. Annie Jacobsen, The Road to Area 51

Unlike many aspects of other conspiracy theories, Area 51 is a frequently-documented fact. UFO seekers can theorize to their hearts content about what might have gone on there or whether Area 51 even exists, but Area 51 is quite real.

In simple terms, it is a place where the United States government conductedand continues to conducttests, in a remote environment where civilians are not in jeopardy and enemies from foreign countries cannot observe or sabotage weaponry or strategy the U.S. might use against them. Assuming that other countries were doing the same, the U.S. also used this remote site to test equipment like the U-2 that would make it possible to spy on other countries and for other countries to do harm to the United States.

In civilian terms, it is merely a location on a map in a remote part of the Nevada desert, near the tiny hamlet of Rachel. The tiny little group of local residents is so small that one source notes that Rachel has never even been home to a post office.

Roswell

The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County. The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff's office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher's home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters." A press release issued by the Roswell Army Air Field, July 8, 1947

The essence of the event commonly known as the Roswell Crash is that someone saw something in the sky during the summer of 1947. Days later someone else found some odd foil, paper and wood on the grounds of a ranch in the New Mexico desert nearly a hundred miles from Roswell. A day or two after that, the debris was taken to a military airbase in Roswell, New Mexico, where it remained overnight before the military flew it to another airbase in Ohio. The story of the Roswell Crash tends to focus on New Mexico, not on the traveling debris found on the ground.

Ironically, the Roswell Crash never happened in Roswell. Thats not to say there was no 1947 crash. Something did appear on the ground that appeared to have come from the skybut it wasnt found anywhere near Roswell. Part of what was found was eventually moved to the airbase in Roswell where it remained overnight, inspiring the name the Roswell Crash.

Few things in American history are as controversial as Roswell. The one undeniable fact is that something happened near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, but beyond that, the facts become murky as memories and evidence lose their luster over the years. That said, the impact of an unidentified object continues to mystify residents, visitors and the curious, and it has not only put Roswell on the map but has kept it there for thousands of tourists.

At the very least, the Roswell Crash has become a meme. Even among those who do not believe there was a crash at all, the vast majority of people recognize the reference especially after the television show The X-Files and assume that it allegedly did (or did not) crash within the city limits of Roswell. To most people, Roswell means UFOs.

The story of how the Roswell Crash became so widely known is a complicated one. Perhaps part of the reason was due to that specific time in history. In 1947, America was undergoing tremendous change. Much of that change involved secrecy and disillusionment. Americans learned that on December 7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. At the time, Hawaii wasnt even a state - it was merely a U.S. territory and had been since 1897 - but it was home to an American naval base, Pearl Harbor. It was also the closest United States target to Japan.

While much of the information disseminated has been in the form of press releases published in newspapers, the FBI eventually relented and released their records involving the Roswell crash. In 2011, more than 2,000 individual documents about this event were scanned and published as the digital project The Vault, part of nearly 7,000 items on various subjects in the Freedom of Information Acts Library.

Nonetheless, skepticism about the official version of the incident prevails, and a countless number of people continue to believe the American government covered up a crash landing by aliens. As John B. Alexander, Ph. D., a former project manager at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and consultant to the CIA, put it, Attempting to come to any complete resolution of the incident is a fools errand, as whatever the truth may have been has become so distorted over time that facts have merged inextricably with fiction.

But fools did abound. The FBI, and anyone else who might have archived top secret memos, reports or even newspaper clippings, were barraged for years with Freedom of Information requests. When the FBI finally complied with thousands and thousands of pages freely disseminated online, they were still accused of withholding or altering the facts.